In the last decade, contemporary art has moved away from traditional “centers” like London or New York in exchange for a global expansion into cities like Beijing, Sao Paulo, or Dubai. Pilar Tompkins Rivas will draw from her extensive experience as an international curator and director of the Latin American branch of the Artist Pension Trust to discuss how this process of decentralization has radically changed the role of the curator, the types of shows being produced, and the art being made.

ADMISSION IS FREE, RSVP REQUIRED

Sessions is an ongoing series of in-depth, intimate conversations designed to facilitate inquiry into the cultural, political, and social topics affecting artists and the art world.

Space is limited to ten attendees and RSVPs are required. Selected readings will be provided ahead of time for discussion. To RSVP or for questions regarding Sessions, please email Erika Recordon at erecordon@mcasantabarbara.org or call (347) 249-5406.

Working artists face a very particular set of challenges: financial pressure, the competitive nature of the market, and the psychological distance between making and selling art. Artist Liza Lou will discuss her own practice and lead us in a conversation about how the artist can work to manage these stresses using mindfulness techniques. We’ll also discuss the transient aspects of creativity and the nature of imperfection.

ADMISSION IS FREE, RSVP REQUIRED

Sessions is an ongoing series of in-depth, intimate conversations designed to facilitate inquiry into the cultural, political, and social topics affecting artists and the art world.

Space is limited to ten attendees and RSVPs are required. Selected readings will be provided ahead of time for discussion. To RSVP or for questions regarding Sessions, please email Erika Recordon at erecordon@mcasantabarbara.org or call (347) 249-5406.

Join us for the opening of Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity and Bloom Projects: Zack Paul, Geometric Landscapes

Exhibitions on view: January 5 – April 13, 2014

Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity

The last 20 years have witnessed a groundswell of popular cultural interest in the field of architecture. Some trace this influence to Frank Gehry’s seminal Guggenheim Bilbao, completed in 1997, which generated such neologisms as “the Bilbao Effect,” “starchitect,” and “wow factor architecture." Recently, Gehry’s influence and that of other significant West Coast architects was the subject of several important exhibitions and publications via the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, Modern Architecture in LA (1945-1980). With a momentum of ever-expanding interest in the field, the exhibition Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) considers the next generation of architects in Los Angeles.

The architects featured in this exhibition, Ramiro Diaz Granados, Amorphis LA; Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, Ball Nogues Studio; Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph, Design Bitches; Doris Sung, DO/SU Studio Architecture; Elena Manferdini, Atelier Manferdini; and Miles Kemp, Digital Physical / Variate Labs embrace cross-fertilization, collaboration, and adaptation, in creating new methodologies for research and implementation. Additionally, these makers, thinkers, and teachers navigate myriad related fields utilizing an architectural perspective (visual arts, critical theory, industrial/graphic design, and fashion). This spirit of inclusivity owes to a particular set of extant conditions including a dearth of building projects due to the recent recession, new digital technologies, growing ecological concerns, and a renegade spirit of experimentation unburdened by the weight of tradition. On the basis of installations, photography, material samples, textiles, and interactive media, Almost Anything Goes presents a range of activity produced by some of LA’s most innovative contemporary architects.

Los Angeles distinguishes itself from the rest of the country for reasons that include a warm climate that is forgiving on the local vernacular architecture--with its predominantly lightweight and inexpensive wood and stucco construction--urban problematics (ex: highways and strip malls), inexpensive housing options, various residential and tenant improvement remodels, the aerospace, automotive, and entertainment industries, and last but not least, an affection for artifice in the built environment. It is also a center where local schools of architecture such as the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, CA; University of California, Los Angeles; Woodbury University School of Architecture, San Diego, CA; and the University Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, serve as incubators of an experimental, generative attitude.

While Almost Anything Goes is reflective of present-day phenomena, the organizers of this exhibition acknowledge the notion of the gesamkunstwerk (a total work of art) and a long history of architects working in areas outside the traditional building milieu such as Jean Prouve, Charles and Ray Eames, and Frank Lloyd Wright (who designed everything for his projects, including the clothing that his clients were to wear inside their own homes). This exhibition at MCASB acts as an antenna receiving and transmitting information about the field and offering a more prismatic and varied perspective on architecture today. Furthermore, with visual artists engaging in architectural projects (Vito Acconci, Ai Weiwei, Jorge Pardo, and Doug Aitken, to name a few), Almost Anything Goes brings the fields of visual arts and architecture closer together for a broader exploration of contemporary culture.

Santa Barbara-based artist Zack Paul will create a newly commissioned work for the winter installment of the Bloom Projects solo exhibition series. Paul will present an immersive installation experience made mostly out of sandpaper that stems from architectural aerial photos of roofs denoting the repetitive geometrization of the planet's surface. The works are inspired in part by 1960's design styles and Phillip K. Dick's science fiction novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, where people are forced to live only under roofs. With a background in graphic design, the artist seeks materials with defined physicality and often deconstructs the mixed use of hand-constructed and industrial fabrication of art. Blurring boundaries between design, collage, sculpture and interior decoration, the work includes 45-degree angle and horizontal paintings, and a wall-to-wall mural that play with perspective, the human scale, and material displacement and re-contextualization.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Paul currently lives and works in Santa Barbara. A self-taught artist, Paul was recently featured in a solo exhibition at Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA; and he has participated in group exhibitions at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (now MCASB), CA; Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College, CA; Kitsch Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and AP’Art International Contemporary Art Festival, St. Remy, France.

About

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB), formerly the Contemporary Arts Forum (CAF), is a non-profit, non-collecting institution dedicated to exhibiting the highest quality of contemporary art while recognizing "the artists of tomorrow," and was founded in 1976 by artists and art supporters seeking a venue dedicated solely to contemporary art. What once began as a grassroots, artist-run organization with nominal funding now serves as the leading contemporary arts presenter in Central California. MCASB offers its innovative education and exhibition programming to the region primarily free of charge. There is no admission fee because MCASB believes that the arts should be accessible to all audiences of all persuasions.
MCASB advances creativity and inspires critical thinking through meaningful engagement with the art of our time.